butt (0.1.27) Manual

butt (broadcast using this tool) is an easy to use, multi OS streaming tool.
It supports ShoutCast and IceCast and runs on Linux, MacOS and Windows.
The main purpose of butt is to stream live audio data from your computers Mic or Line input
to an Shoutcast or Icecast server. Recording is also possible.
It is NOT intended to be a server by itself or automatically stream a set of audio files.

Mount the butt-<version>.dmg by double clicking and
drop the butt file to the Applications folder.

Just run the butt-<version>-setup.exe as usual and go through the
installer pages.
The default installation path might be unusual, but this way it is possible to install
butt without administration rights.

First of all the following libraries have to be installed on your system
fltk-1.3, portaudio19, libmp3lame, libvorbis, libogg, libflac, libopus, libsamplerate, libfdk-aac, libdbus-1, libssl
They are quite common and should be included in every popular linux distribution.

On Ubuntu you can install them with
sudo apt-get install libfltk1.3-dev portaudio19-dev libopus-dev libmp3lame-dev libvorbis-dev libogg-dev libflac-dev libfdk-aac-dev libdbus-1-dev libsamplerate0-dev libssl-dev

On Distributions which don’t have libfdk-aac like debian you can compile without aac support with:
./configure --disable-aac

If you want to disable SSL/TLS support you can run:
./configure --disable-ssl

For compiling on Windows I recommend the msys2 x64 (www.msys2.org) environment.
They have all the needed packages in their pacman repository. Additionally you need to install the libwinpthread-git package.
Make sure that you select the x64 version of each package.

After installing the above libraries you can install butt from source as usual:

In case the included configure script or the make process fails on your system, try to create a new configure script by invoking: autoreconf -i and start with ./configure again.

When you start butt the first time, it will create a default configuration
file in in your home directory (~/.buttrc) on Linux and OS X or at
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\buttrc on Windows.

In order to connect to a server, you need to add a new server in the config window.
Just open the settings window and click on [ADD].
Now fill in the input fields with the server data and click on the new [ADD].
To connect to the server just press the play button in the main window and enjoy
your broadcast.

The command line option -c <path_to_file> allows you to define a new standard configuration path.
This makes it possible to have multiple instances with different configurations
running. In case the file does not exists, butt will create a default file.

[Save]: Saves your current settings to the standard configuration
file or to the file that was passed to the -c option
[Export]: Saves your current settings to the given file
[Import]: Loads the selected file and applies the settings

The dot matrix display shows you the current state of the butt software.
The states are: idle, streaming, recording.
When in streaming and/or recording state you can cycle through the information by clicking on the display.
You can choose between online duration, data sent, recording duration and data recorded

The [>] symbol shines yellow if butt is connected to a server.
The [O] symbol shines orange if the [start rec. when connected] checkbox is activated.
The [O] symbol shines red if butt is currently recording.

Gain slider: The slider is only visible when the little [more/less] button below
the [settings] button was clicked.
With this slider you can attenuate and amplify the input signal between -24 dB and +24 dB, respectively.
Double clicking the slider resets the gain to 0 dB. Use this slider only to fine tune your input signal.
It does not change the operating systems input volume setting. Instead, the input signal is multiplied
by the given factor. Thus, adding too much gain will also add lots of noise.

The audio settings tab allows you to select your audio interface and the desired sample rate.
If you have a multi-channel device you may also select the desired input channels for the left and
right audio channel.

With the channel mode setting you tell butt if the audio stream shall be encoded to stereo or mono.
This brings us to 4 possible combinations.

This is probably the most used combination.
Left and Right channels are encoded into a stereo stream.

The selected channel is used for Left and Right channel in a stereo stream.

Left and Right channels are averaged into a mono stream.

The selected channel is used as mono channel in a mono stream.

To start streaming just click the play symbol.
butt will try to connect to the server until you press the stop button.
If the connection gets lost, butt will try to reconnect until the stop button is pressed

You can stream in 5 different audio codecs: mp3, aac+, ogg/vorbis, ogg/opus and FLAC.
In case opus is selected the sample rate is always upsampled to 48 kHz.
Of course no upsampling is needed if you select 48 kHz as sample rate.

If you want to inform the listener about which song is currently playing you
can do that on the [Stream] tab.
You only need to type the song into the Song Name input field
and hit Enter or click [OK].

butt can also update the song automatically from a text file.
The first or the last line of the file must be the name of the song.
As soon as butt detects that the file has been changed, it updates the
name of the song on the server.

If you run butt on MacOS or Linux you can even transfer the current
song name from an audio player to butt.
Supported audio players:
Linux: Rhythmbox, Banshee, Clementine, Cantana, Spotify
MacOS: iTunes/Music, Vox, Spotify

In case you want to add a prefix and/or a suffix to your song name
you can do that by entering the desired text into the corresponding
input field.

Updating the song name is not supported for the Opus codec.

In the [main] settings window you can add stream infos.
This allows you to deliver more details about your stream.
For example the genre of your music, description of your station, web address etc.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to update stream infos during a broadcast.
You need to reconnect for updating the stream infos.

If you activate the checkbox Start streaming after launch butt will
automatically connect to the server as soon as the application has been started.

butt can also connect and disconnect depending on the audio signal level:

To connect automatically if a signal is present for a certain amount of time
enter an integral number larger than 0 into the Start if signal is present for […​] seconds field.

To disconnect automatically if the signal is absent for a certain amount of time
enter an integral number larger than 0 into the Stop if signal is absent for […​] seconds field.

The default signal detection levels are set to -50.0 dB and can be independently changed
for the present and absent signal cases in the [Audio] tab.

butt is able to record and stream simultaneously in different bit rates.
For example you can stream with 96 kbit and record with 192 kbit.
Recording is possible in mp3, aac+, ogg/vorbis, ogg/opus, FLAC or wav.

To record your session you first need to select the destination folder and specify a file name
in the [Rec] tab.
butt will replace the variables %d, %m and %y with the current day, month and year.
For example rec_(%m_%d_%y).mp3 translates to rec_(03_28_2008).mp3.
Other possible time variables are %H (hours) %M (minutes) %S (seconds).

With the %i variable you can add an index number to your file name.
This means with rec_%i.mp3 butt first tries to record to rec_0.mp3. In case that
file already exists, butt tries rec_1.mp3 and so on…​

To manually start the recording simply press the record symbol.
To stop recording just click on the record symbol again.

If the start recording when connected checkbox is activated butt starts the
recording immediately after being connected to a server.
Vice versa butt will stop the recording if the Stop recording when disconnected checkbox
is active.
Additionally you can tell butt to immediately start recording after the application has been
launched by checking the 'Start recording after launch" box.

To start recording automatically if a signal is present for a certain amount of time
enter an integral number larger than 0 into the Start if signal is present for […​] seconds field.

To stop recording automatically if the signal is absent for a certain amount of time
enter an integral number larger than 0 into the Stop if signal is absent for […​] seconds field.

The default signal detection levels are set to -50.0 dB and can be independently changed+ for the present and absent signal cases in the [Audio] tab.

You can also tell butt to split your recording into
separat files every n minutes. Just enter a number higher than 0
into the Split file every [..] minutes field.

Let’s assume your file name is rec_(%m_%d_%y)_%i.mp3 Then the first file is
expanded to rec\_(03_28_2008)_0-1.mp3, the second after n minutes to
rec_(03_28_2008)_0-2.mp3, the third to rec_(03_28_2008)_0-3.mp3, you got it.

If the sync to full hour checkbox is activated the automatic file splitting
is synchronized to the full hour. This means if the time is 8:55 and file
splitting is set to 15 minutes, the second file starts at 9:00 and the third
at 9:15.
If you want to split the recording now, just click the [Split now] button.

The equalizer allows you to change the gain of certain freuqncy bands from -15 dB to 15 dB.

Dynamic range compression is used to reduce the difference between
loud and quiet parts of the signal, and thus provide a more consistent
experience for listeners. It is used by virtually all professional
radio stations.

The recommended procedure for configuring the compressor is as follows:

This procedure can take some time to find the optimum settings, which
are determined by listening as much as by metering, but it generally
only needs to be done once - butt will save your settings, so once you
have values that work well for your content, you probably don’t need
to adjust them again.

As a rough guide, music should be compressed relatively subtly, with a
fairly high threshold and a ratio typically between 2 and 3. Pure
speech content can be compressed much more dramatically, with a low
threshold and a ratio of 5 or more; this will make the speech easier
for the listener to understand, and will also reduce the differences
between different speakers or by not keeping a very consistent
distance from the microphone.

For mixed speech and music broadcasting, it is recommended to set
butt’s compression as for music, and then have an additional
compressor (typically a hardware module) between the microphones and
the final mix.

To enable encryption for a certain server, you only have to activate the
Use SSL/TLS checkbox in the server settings. Please bear in mind that the
server must be configured with SSL/TLS support in order to make this working.
The connection will fail if you activate SSL/TLS for a server which does not
support encryption.
If the certficicate validation fails, butt will ask you if you want to trust
that certificate anyway. If you click on [TRUST] butt will establish the
connection and remembers the decision for that certificate and server.
By pressing the button [Revoke certificate trust] you can revoke that
decision.
If you want to specify your own file or folder with CA certificates,
you can enter the path to the file or folder in the [TLS] tab of the
settings window. Usually you should not need to enter any information there.

butt can be controlled from command line.
If you want you can even control butt from a remote computer.
Please refer to the section below for more information on that.

butt has several command line options which can be seperated into two modes.

These options change the behaviour of the instance you are about to start.

-c <path>:
This option allows you to select a different configuration path. It is useful if you
want to run several butt instances with different configurations. Just pass a different
configuration file with the -c option for every instance.

-A:
This option tells butt to accept control commands from your network or even the internet.

-x:
Use this option if you do not want to run a command server at all. This will also disable receiving commands from your local machine.

-p <port>:
With this option you can define the port of the command server. The default port is 1256. Use this option for example if you have several butt instances that you want to control from command line.

With these options you can send control commands to a running butt instance.

-s [name]:
This command tells butt to connect to the server name. If the name parameter is omitted, butt will connect to the currently selected server.

-d:
When receiving this command, butt will disconnect from the current server.

-r:
This command starts the recording engine.

-t:
Use this option to stop the recording.

-S:
Requests a status information packet. The answer will be of the form:
connected: 1
connecting: 0
recording: 0
where 0 means the function is inactive and 1 means the function is active.

-a <address>:
Use this option to control a butt instance that is running on a remote computer.
In order to control a remote butt instance the butt instance must have been
started with the -A option. The parameter address can be either a IP Address or a hostname.

-p <port>:
This should be set to the same port that has been given to the butt instance you want to control.
By default the command will be sent to port 1256.

Delete the butt.app from your Application folder and
remove the configuration file from /Users/<username>/.buttrc

Run the Uninstaller from the butt folder in your windows start menu.

Run sudo make uninstall from the source tree and
remove the configuration file from /home/<username>/.buttrc

butt at danielnoethen dot de

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